that is not a bad message if you are the obama white house. >> i agree, i think obama clearly ran on raising taxes on those making a quarter million dollars or more per year and 67% of the voters consistently agreed with that message. that is as close to a mandate as you were going to get in american politics. the candidates talk about it, the voters agree and poles to it, and the guy wins. so he has a mandate to try to do that, but there is no law saying that republicans cannot lay down in front of the train and stop that. and are divided party system, this republican party has the ability to stop that until we get to the machinations of the bush tax cuts. every time obama sat down to negotiate with republicans up until now, they have had an its vantage. that is that obama always wanted negotiations to succeed more than they did. a lot of republicans said, hey, let the debt ceiling expire because that is the kind of fire and brimstone punishment of a sitting nation that turns them on. but right now what will happen is if the six buyers, all those tax cuts expire at once, and then th